THE Lowly Peon

'america' by the great allen ginsberg

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14 October 2009, 5:18am

on the interwebs recently, stevelawson tweeted a reference to allen ginsberg's america, a personal favorite of mine. i remember when i was younger listening to a copy (america on itunes) i downloaded in search for howl, his more popular epic, which i wrote abut in high school. honestly, at the time, i was always disappointed to not be listening to howl, which i for some reason had a hard time finding. but since then, it's become a part of me, making sense of things and pointing out the slightly more vague problems that the world — namely america — has now.

i became obsessed with a lot of beatnik poetry and art in high school, which faded out in college when i grew more interested in old japanese and chinese poets, which then drew me to the dao de jing and eventually to study (and then live) in china. when visiting nellie more than two years ago, i went to city lights bookstore, the place where ginsberg and other beatniks (keroac, ferlinghetti (the founder), van ronk) hung out a lot. while there i got into a weird trance, and felt connected to it all again. i got a bunch of old copies of poetry i had since left behind, and started to read it all over again. i also bought a copy of keroac's "the dharma bums", recalling the sacredness of "on the road" in high school and then college.

it was only on my trip to scotland this past spring to visit wjerome that i got around to reading it. i still have the receipt shoved in the middle somewhere, once used as a bookmark. sixteen dollars twenty seven cents, july tenth, twothousandseven. i can't stand my own mind.

after reading the book, i grew quite sad. my once hero, ol' keroac, seemed almost — and forgive me for saying so — naive. of course it wasn't explicitly him, but rather the protagonist in the book, which clearly represented him in some way or another. it made me frightened to read "on the road" again, which was my bible in high school (along with "into the wild", which has stood the test of time well).

needing, though, to somehow feel grounded, i started listening to that old recording of america by ginsberg again. and not only was it as beautiful as i remembered (and i remembered, surprisingly, a lot), but it was still true. everything made sense, if not more sense than before, after my years of growth and gaining of whatever wisdom i've been fortunate enough to receive in my years of travel and education.

so thanks again, stevelawson, for reminding me of something beautiful.